losthighway wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 9:49 am I dig this guy.

Bernardo wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 9:38 pm

losthighway wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 9:49 am I dig this guy.

He used to be in a hugely successful band, Los Hermanos, every few years they do a reunion tour and fill stadiums.

Casa de Nelson e Benedita

by Nelson dos Santos, Benedita Duarte, Thomas Rohrer, Cicero Alves

An intimate collection of home and street recordings, captured by Thomas Rohrer, consisting of traditional and original songs, improvisations, and spontaneous compositions. Although broadly grounded in the so-called Forró 'Pé de Serra', much of this set contains a freer, more abstract music, drawn directly from Nelson’s own intuitions and his boundless youthful enthusiasm. As Nelson 'da Rabeca' himself would say, much of this music is in his beloved “foothills” style.
The meeting of Thomas, Nelson and Benedita came about through the rabecas made by Nelson dos Santos. The Brazilian rabeca, related to the Portugese rabeca chuleira, plays in the same range as a violin, but may be tuned in fourths or fifths.
The instrument made it possible for the musical sensibilities of the players from Alagoas and Switzerland to open a dialogue.
Music came late to Nelson. Despite his extensive memory of the repertoire of popular music from the state of Alagoas, the instrumentalist, composer and luthier came to the arts after decades of back-breaking work harvesting sugar cane on plantations. Impressed by the sound of a violin he saw on television, he set out to reproduce a stringed instrument that could be played with a bow.
He discovered how to make, tune and play the rabeca entirely of his own volition. Despite being acoustic, the rabeca doesn’t produce the uniform sound of orchestral violin strings, inhabiting instead a more metallic sound world. Nelson lets the strings creak and hoarse tones emulate harmonies that bring to mind medieval songs, cirandas [a traditional children's dance] and xotes [a dance and music subgenre associated with forró]. In his fifties, the artist found a way to live more intensely through music and he’s been young at heart for a long time now.
This original sound, mixed with non-conventional approaches, led Thomas Rohrer to take up the rabeca. When he arrived in Brazil, the Swiss musician no longer played the violin he’d learned in childhood, he had become a saxophonist dedicated to the production of new music; free improvisation came to predominate his approach. For Rohrer, improvisation is a way of avoiding traditional harmonic tics, opening up a conversation with an extended range of creative processes. His music is more spontaneous; open to new sounds and new ways of playing.
Thomas encountered the rabeca in 1995 through meeting Zé Gomes (1938 - 2009), a major influence, who became a friend, and one of Brazil’s most important musicians. The instrument put Thomas in touch with timbres that were new to him, along with the rhythmic repertoire of Brazil’s northeastern interior. The sound that resonated most strongly here was that of Nelson’s rabeca. In 1999, Thomas got his hands on two of Nelson's instruments and forged a friendship with the rabeca player from Marechal Deodoro, Alagoas.
At times rabecas sound like creaky ox-drawn carts, the rough cries of a long day’s work in the fields, of wood rubbing on wood, metal and stone. There’s a festive air to the form in which these raw sounds are articulated, a sense of unbridled joy.
In Benedita’s lyrics we find an effort to create a universal song that makes sense for the lived experience of all; She sings of a love that asks for nothing in exchange, of encounters with the wonders of the natural and supernatural worlds, and of the music that brings joy to her and Nelson.
They are joined on many of these recordings by longtime friend and neighbour Cicero Alves, a zabumba player and singer with a large repertoire of Forró‘s. He passes by the house most days for a play and a chat.